Sidewalk Chalk
by havenward
Summary: Young Sam and Dean have an assignment from Dad drawing circles. Sidewalk chalk might not have been the best tool for the job. Preseries. Oneshot.


Dean looked at his hands and sighed. Sidewalk chalk sucked. A lot. It wasn't anything like normal white chalk, which was small and hard and didn't make much dust if he didn't press too hard. Dad had made him practice writing symbols with it on a chalkboard tablet the size of his old science workbook yesterday. Dean hadn't been too keen on it; Sammy asked enough questions already without adding random objects he was sure to see his brother and father using. The kid felt left out enough already.

Thankfully Dad had taken him to register for pre-school. Sam was four years, three months, two weeks and a day old now (he made sure Dean kept track on the calendar hanging in the kitchen), and much too smart for his own good. Dad said it would be good for Sammy to play with other kids. He also said that it would be good for them to have the youngest Winchester out of their hair for a while every day before Dean started school again. Dad had every intention of training him into the ground, until he could fight and protect himself without thinking about it.

Dean was more concerned with Sammy being safe on his own. Before now, when he was in school, Sam was with Dad. And if Dad had a job, well, Dean stayed home.

Now Sammy would be halfway across town and alone. What if the building ended up being haunted? What if there was a werewolf down the street? What if one of the teachers thought pint-sized humans made awesome snacks? What if the thing that...

He snapped back to the present when something cracked between his hands. Dean blinked when he discovered the green chalk broken in two. The pieces were uneven, and the break itself was a shattered mess that left green dust all over his clothes from his chest to his knees. At least none had gotten on the loose button up he had on over his t-shirt. He didn't even remember picking the chalk up again.

"Shit," he muttered. Then he glanced over his shoulder to see if Sam had heard him. Dad would kill him once for using that word, and then kill him again if Sammy learned it from him.

The younger boy didn't even look up. He was focused diligently on the piece of purple chalk he held to the ground. Sam inched his way around the circumference of the circle he was making. His tongue stuck out of the corner of his mouth in concentration. Purple smudges crisscrossed his face.

Dean sighed. "When I said I wanted to do stuff that included Sam," he said to himself, "I meant something like a baseball game or a trip to the zoo." Training to make perfect circles quickly wasn't even on the bottom of his list of ideas. At least it was easy: hammer a nail in the ground as an anchor, tie a string to the nail and a piece of chalk with a decent length in between, trace the circle by keeping the string taut.

Easy, except for the part where Dean had to hammer the nail into concrete. They were making use of an old basketball court in the park. No one bothered them, because only one tilted pole still had a faded backboard attached. It didn't even have a hoop on it.

"Huh?" Sam asked. He stayed bent over, chalk in place and string perfectly straight. Somehow he managed to look up at Dean through his mop of hair. Sammy must have been having problems keeping it out of his face. Purple streaks stood out against the dark tangle.

"Nothing," Dean said. The half-truth came easily. "I broke my chalk, and now I'll have to do laundry tonight instead of tomorrow." He tugged on his t-shirt to show his brother. A small cloud of green dust floated up into his face and he sneezed.

Sammy laughed. He always laughed with his whole body, like every inch of him from his dimples to his toes was amused. But trying to stay bent over was awkward. It looked like he was shaking his butt in the air. He ended up having to stand up just to breathe. Dean couldn't help but chuckle.

"That was awesome!" Sam finally managed to say. "Your face has green chalk all over it now!"

Dean wiped his face with his arm. Sure enough, there was a fine layer of green left behind. He tossed the smaller bits of chalk off to the side of the court. The two larger pieces went back into the bucket. "Yeah, well, I hate to tell ya kiddo. You've got _purple_ all over your face. Like you're wearing make-up or something."

"Nuh-uh!" Sam promptly dropped the chalk in order to prove his brother wrong. The problem was that he started to rub his face with his hands before remembering he'd held the chalk with both of them. The realization struck after about thirty seconds. Of course, by that point Sam's whole face was purple. "...Oops."

It took Dean a few moments to suppress the worst of his laughter. A snicker or two might have escaped, but his brother deserved it. Maybe next time Sam would pay better attention. For now the kid was starting to turn bright red under all that chalk.

"C'mere, squirt," Dean said. The younger boy shuffled over to him with his shoulders slumped and his head hung so that his hair hid his face. "It's alright, Sammy." He shrugged out of the button-up shirt and folded it. "I'm doing laundry anyway, right? You just need to be a little more careful. Close your eyes."

Sam obeyed. Dean started brushing chalk from his brother's face with his shirt. Once all the loose dust was gone he refolded the increasingly purple shirt. He licked one corner. Gently and carefully Dean made sure there was no chalk whatsoever left around Sam's eyes. After he was done with that he chuckled - since so much of his brother's face was still purple, he looked sort of like a reverse racoon. Dean found a clean corner of his shirt and licked again. Sammy's forehead was next.

Sam shifted from one foot to another as his brother continued working. "Hey Dean?" His voice was muffled a little by the shirt.

"You gotta pee or something? This is only going to take longer if you keep wiggling like this."

"No," Sam said. He did his best to hold still. "Its just that... even you say its gross when we see people do this stuff. Like that lady in the diner the other night, when she licked her napkin to clean her nephew's face. You said it was totally sick..."

"That was different," Dean said. He refolded his shirt again; this would be the last time it would be of any use. "For one thing, she slobbered on that napkin like Jabba the Hut when there was a perfectly good glass of water on the table. Then there's the fact that the face she was cleaning looked like it had taken a bath in the clam chowder. And it wasn't the lady's nephew. It was her exceedingly ugly niece, Petunia."

"That was a girl?" Sam asked. His brother nodded, looking for all the world as though he wished he were wrong. Sammy wrinkled up his nose in distaste. "Ewwww. Still. Can't we find some real water or something?"

"If you want," Dean said. "But I have to warn you that half of your face is purple, and half of it isn't. We can walk all the way across the park to the water fountains on Mulberry, if you don't mind walking past a couple picnics or through a few frisbee or football games. The closest bathroom is in the ice cream shop."

Sam started to turn red again. "But then Mr. Brodsky will see me!"

His big brother nodded. Sam looked forward to the rare afternoons when Dad had a few extra bucks and told his boys to treat themselves. And since arriving here in mid-July, they would head straight to Brodsky's Ices and Creams. Old Mr. Brodsky always told Sammy stories while he ate his junior hot fudge sunday, and always gave Dean two scoops of Rocky Road with sprinkles (even though he only asked or paid for his brother's ice cream).

"It's up to you, Two Face," Dean said. The way Sam's face fell, though, he would have believed it if someone told him he'd said Flying Purple People Eater instead.

But the kid sucked up his pride, set his mouth in a grim line, and looked his brother in the eye. "Alright, finish," he said. "But make it fast!"

Dean grinned reassuringly. "That's my Sammy." He worked as quickly as he could without rubbing Sam's face raw or outright spitting on him. In the end he had his brother wipe his own face on the back of Dean's t-shirt. "Well... you still have a few marks on your cheeks, but it just makes you look artistic. You should be fine until we get home."

"Thanks," Sam said. "Hey Dean? Does that mean we can go home now?"

"I wish. You heard Dad. Once I can do two concentric circles in three minutes and you can do one circle by yourself we can go." Dean went over to the bucket of chalk and pulled out the blue one. "Or in time for dinner, whichever is first." He heard his brother sigh and turned around. The younger boy was standing next to his circle, shoulder slump and hair shield in place again. "Sammy? What's wrong now?"

Sam looked up at him. He was pouting. Worse, he was making puppy eyes. "I broke my chalk." He pointed a single dejected finger down at four chunks of purple chalk. Dean looked at the chalk, and then at his brother. Somehow he managed to turn back to the bucket of chalk before he rolled his eyes. Honestly, he sometimes wondered why Sammy wasn't born a girl.

"Its ok," he said. Dean was proud of how normal his voice sounded. "We've got plenty more. I'll bring you one." In fact, he already had one in mind. He pulled it out and turned back toward his brother. "Just toss those off to the side out of the way. You remember how I showed you to tie the string?"

"Yeah," Sam answered as he chucked bits of purple into the grass. He was acting sullen, but at least he wasn't pouting anymore. Dean was standing next to him by the time he was done. "This is going to take forever. Why does Dad want us to do this anyway? Why is it important?"

The older boy shrugged. Dean struggled to be nonchalant. He clenched his jaw in an attempt to swallow his fear; he settled for turning to watch the happy families and groups of friends laughing and playing in the grass so Sammy couldn't see it. "You know how he is," he said. It didn't sound quite right; he was speaking too softly. "I think its one of those things he picked up in the Marines, you know?" That sounded better. Truer. "We don't exactly stick around long enough to do Boy Scouts or anything. He teaches us to use maps, tie knots, whatever. And it uses math, right? It's probably some funky combination of triangulating and getting us back in the mind set for school." Dean shrugged again, but he managed to cast a mischievous grin in his brother's direction. "Or he could just be crazy."

"Like the salt." Sam didn't make it a question. He'd been laughed at by the kids down the street when he asked why they didn't put down salt lines.

Dean watched him for a moment. Sammy was looking at the people out on the field now. He seemed as sullen as he had a few moments ago with the purple stuff. "Yeah, like the salt." Dean briefly considered trying to cheer his brother up. He decided to go for distraction instead, and thrust the chalk into his hands. "Well, these circles aren't going to draw themselves. Here's your chalk, Samantha."

That caught Sam off guard. "What?" he asked. He looked at the chalk he'd been given. "Awww, Dean! C'mon!"

"Chalk and talk at the same time, or I'll end up being done before you are." Dean snickered as he timed himself on a new set of circles.

"But... You gave me pink. Why do I always get the girly colors?" Sammy pulled his nail out of the ground with determination and picked a new spot.

Dean grinned at his own genius. "Because you whine like one! And because I'm the oldest and I say so!"


End file.
